“Ready or not?” Administrative cut-offs and the youth–staff readiness gap in leaving care in China

In China, young people are expected to exit state care at 18 or on completing education, yet the boundary between administrative “readiness” and lived preparedness remains unclear. This study examines how leaving care is imagined, made possible, and governed by those approaching exit and by staff responsible for preparation. Semi-structured online interviews in Mandarin with nine university-level care-experienced young people and eight staff were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis with cross-group comparison. Young people framed leaving as a negotiated process conditioned by plans, emotions, and material thresholds: sequenced or conditional pathways; “readiness work”; and reliance on the institution as both home/belonging and subsistence support, with housing and income decisive for timing. Staff, by contrast, cast leaving as a bounded administrative event: responsibility ends at the cut-off, with residual, relationship-based help and conditional medical support, while substantive supports were delegated to other agencies. Cross-cutting mechanisms included hukou transfer as a jurisdictional handover that reallocates responsibility for housing and benefits, fragmented interdepartmental mandates, and locality-dependent financing. Higher-education leavers faced dual exposure at graduation (labour-market entry plus withdrawal of food and lodging). Findings support shifting from cliff-edge exit to scaffolded transition via early and tapered planning, guaranteed housing bridges, a named interagency navigator, and temporary benefit continuity during hukou-related jurisdictional change.